Karl Rove, Mike Lee spar on Obamacare

The war over the GOP’s strategy to fight Obamacare spilled onto the radio waves Monday as Karl Rove went toe-to-toe with Utah Sen. Mike Lee for an hour on Sean Hannity’s radio show.

The two men represent the gaping chasm between two wings of the Republican Party on the fall spending strategy. The Utah senator and other conservatives in the House and Senate are vowing to oppose fall spending bills that contain funding for the health care law.

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This tactic is vehemently opposed by Republicans like Rove, who believe the strategy will result in the GOP being blamed for a government shutdown and hurt the party’s electoral aspirations nationwide.

Lee sought Monday to move the debate away from the shutdown theatrics, instead putting forth a strategy in which the GOP-controlled House passes a bill funding the government that contains a rider from Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ga.) that defunds the Affordable Care Act. Lee then said the tables would be turned on Senate Democrats to make the shutdown decision.

“Would they choose to shut down government?” Lee asked of Democrats. “Or do the right thing?”

But Rove said there’s not a single Democratic vote in the Senate for such a strategy and demanded Lee suggest Senate Democrats who could be turned to to defund the law. Lee responded that he wants to lock down Republicans first. Rove concluded Lee’s effort would backfire and be a replay of 1995, a government shutdown often blamed on the GOP.

“It counts on the Democrats, when the House sends over a bill, caving. And what evidence do we have that they will?” Rove asked.

Rove posited that if House Republicans followed Lee’s playbook, Senate Democrats would simply strip the bill of the Obamacare language and send it back to the House right before the Sept. 30 deadline, putting the shutdown spotlight again on Republicans. And if the House balked it would be a boon to the Democrats in next year’s midterm elections, Rove said.

"This just assumes that the Democrats are going to be scared of a shutdown. They aren't. They want it," Rove said. "This is the one strategy, the one tactic that might be able to guarantee that the Democrats pick up seats in the Congress in 2014."

Lee said critics of his plan are presenting a “false choice” between a shutdown and Obamacare. And he worries that Republicans are beginning to run out of steam in the defund battles.

“We cave and we cave and we cave,” Lee said. “This is how we get into trouble.”

Rove said a better road map to weakening the health care law is instead to push votes in the Senate to delay the individual mandate of the bill by a year, as passed the House recently with a handful of Democratic votes. Rove also forcefully pushed back on Lee and fellow conservatives who are portraying the spending fight as a last stand for conservatives to kill the law. Lee was unmoved.

“The best way to delay is to defund,” Lee shot back. “We’ve got to fight on every single front we have.”

Rove preached patience and advocated a plan of steady Obamacare opposition until there’s a Republican president that can sign a repeal or defund law because anyone that thinks President Barack Obama would sign a law without Obamacare funding is “kidding themselves.”